Section 75 and consumer rights

born_again

Do not get that refusal for chargeback as it's not relevant.
You claim should have been on the grounds of non receipt of service if the owners cancelled it.

yorkie2021

I have to say I have found the FOS to be useless with s75 and they tend to act with bias in favour of the bank.  Send the bank a pre-action letter and see if that forces the issues.

Sandtree

You have to remember that the FOS does not set binding precedent and so just because they decide one thing on one case doesnt force them to decide the same thing on all other identical cases. If you search their decisions you will find many cases which contradict each other... you can even see trends that two ombudsman (as in people who hold that job title) are consistent to their own decision and always at odds to the other ombudsman.

[Deleted User]

yorkie2021 said:

I have to say I have found the FOS to be useless with s75 and they tend to act with bias in favour of the bank.  Send the bank a pre-action letter and see if that forces the issues.

S75 is a legal right, if the bank rejects an S75 it will be because they feel it doesn't sit within the law. The FOS doesn't have bias towards banks, it has consumer bias, but they cannot force a bank to do something which the bank has no obligation to do.
As an example, if the bank refused to do a S75, the FOS can take action.
If the bank refused to do a S75 as the purchase was under the £100 limit, the FOS can't do anything so would reject your complaint - but that isn't bank bias, they can't force them to do something that legally they don't have to.

Sandtree

Deleted_User said:
If the bank refused to do a S75 as the purchase was under the £100 limit, the FOS can't do anything so would reject your complaint - but that isn't bank bias, they can't force them to do something that legally they don't have to.

Actually not true

The FOS decisions are binding on the financial institutes once its escalated to an ombudsman. If you look at some of the case studies on S75 claims where intermediaries like iZettle are used the ombudsman explicitly points out that they are not bound to test it in a legal sense as a court would be but in a sense of customer fairness and so have more than once stated the S75 claim must be settled despite the fact a court may say that the intermediary may have broken the supply chain from a purely legal view on S75

[Deleted User]

Sandtree said:

Deleted_User said:
If the bank refused to do a S75 as the purchase was under the £100 limit, the FOS can't do anything so would reject your complaint - but that isn't bank bias, they can't force them to do something that legally they don't have to.

Actually not true

The FOS decisions are binding on the financial institutes once its escalated to an ombudsman. If you look at some of the case studies on S75 claims where intermediaries like iZettle are used the ombudsman explicitly points out that they are not bound to test it in a legal sense as a court would be but in a sense of customer fairness and so have more than once stated the S75 claim must be settled despite the fact a court may say that the intermediary may have broken the supply chain from a purely legal view on S75

So you're saying the FOS would force a firm to comply with an S75 request for someone who spent £5 or £40,000 on a credit card even though the law is clear it applies to £100-£30,000 only? 

Sandtree

Deleted_User said:

So you're saying the FOS would force a firm to comply with an S75 request for someone who spent £5 or £40,000 on a credit card even though the law is clear it applies to £100-£30,000 only? 

Unfortunately I cannot quickly find the examples in relation to iZettle and S75 claims but will add them here if I can... in short in those cases the credit card companies rejected the s75 claims because they said the debtor-creditor-supplier link had been broken by the insertion of the payment processor.

In those cases the ombudsman acknowledges his decision could be different to a court of law and goes on about the life moving on but legislation requiring new acts of parliament but states that as an ombudsman they are not bound in the same way and so upholds the complaints.

I did come across a more recent case with Stripe but the ombudsman in that case words it better and indeed references some case law to help rationalise his decision.

It would be a brave ombudsman who decides that the £30,000 being so old is no longer appropriate and that it too should move with the times. I'd assume their internal checks and oversight ensures one doesnt go too rogue.

I have seen totally incomprehensible decisions received from the ombudsman but those cases have all been fairly modest in value and so we've just settled it. Adjudicator decisions can be rejected and pushed up to ombudsman but to the best of my knowledge their decisions cannot be further challenged even if there is an error in law etc. As ombudsman only look at consumer issues there is a fairly natural cap to the level of monies we are talking about in most cases.

born_again

Deleted_User said:

Sandtree said:

Deleted_User said:
If the bank refused to do a S75 as the purchase was under the £100 limit, the FOS can't do anything so would reject your complaint - but that isn't bank bias, they can't force them to do something that legally they don't have to.

Actually not true

The FOS decisions are binding on the financial institutes once its escalated to an ombudsman. If you look at some of the case studies on S75 claims where intermediaries like iZettle are used the ombudsman explicitly points out that they are not bound to test it in a legal sense as a court would be but in a sense of customer fairness and so have more than once stated the S75 claim must be settled despite the fact a court may say that the intermediary may have broken the supply chain from a purely legal view on S75

So you're saying the FOS would force a firm to comply with an S75 request for someone who spent £5 or £40,000 on a credit card even though the law is clear it applies to £100-£30,000 only? 

Sandtree has not said that FOS can/Will force a bank to payout when it is not within the required limits of S75

[Deleted User]

born_again said:

Deleted_User said:

Sandtree said:

Deleted_User said:
If the bank refused to do a S75 as the purchase was under the £100 limit, the FOS can't do anything so would reject your complaint - but that isn't bank bias, they can't force them to do something that legally they don't have to.

Actually not true

The FOS decisions are binding on the financial institutes once its escalated to an ombudsman. If you look at some of the case studies on S75 claims where intermediaries like iZettle are used the ombudsman explicitly points out that they are not bound to test it in a legal sense as a court would be but in a sense of customer fairness and so have more than once stated the S75 claim must be settled despite the fact a court may say that the intermediary may have broken the supply chain from a purely legal view on S75

So you're saying the FOS would force a firm to comply with an S75 request for someone who spent £5 or £40,000 on a credit card even though the law is clear it applies to £100-£30,000 only? 

Sandtree has not said that FOS can/Will force a bank to payout when it is not within the required limits of S75

And I didn't say they would

I made a post, Sandtree chose to create a strawman argument, based on something I didn't say, rather than address the point I made. Read my post that Sandtree replied to. I made it very clear that the FOS cannot force a bank to do something they are not obliged to do and made it EXPLICITLY clear what I meant, by providing an example of a situation where the FOS cannot overrule a bank decision. Sandtree replied by saying I was incorrect, so I asked for an example of the FOS making a decision where the SINGLE, SPECIFIC example I provided was incorrect. Instead of actually answering Sandtree chose the strawman argument instead.

Sandtree

Deleted_User said:

And I didn't say they would

I made a post, Sandtree chose to create a strawman argument, based on something I didn't say, rather than address the point I made. Read my post that Sandtree replied to. I made it very clear that the FOS cannot force a bank to do something they are not obliged to do and made it EXPLICITLY clear what I meant, by providing an example of a situation where the FOS cannot overrule a bank decision. Sandtree replied by saying I was incorrect, so I asked for an example of the FOS making a decision where the SINGLE, SPECIFIC example I provided was incorrect. Instead of actually answering Sandtree chose the strawman argument instead.

I was recalling cases that I was struggling to find not "choosing a strawman argument instead".

One example would be Decision Reference DRN8874696 (financial-ombudsman.org.uk) where the Ombudsman states:

When considering a complaint about a financial services provider, I’m not determining the outcome of a claim that a party might have under section 75. I take section 75 into account when I think about what’s a fair way to resolve the complaint but I don’t have to reach the same view as, for example, a court might reach if Mr W made a claim through them for breach of contract or misrepresentation. 

As previously stated in my "strawman", the ombudsman is not bound to come to the same conclusion the courts would and has more scope for interpretation... unfortunately not found the better case which has the above plus talk of evolution of circumstances (FinTech effectively) and law being slow to keep up.